


Call the Ships to Port

by vodkaanddebauchery



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Broh Week., Epistolary Romance, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 04:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vodkaanddebauchery/pseuds/vodkaanddebauchery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The view from Air Temple Island offers a very different perspective.<br/>Yet another installation for Broh Week (Day 3/Devotion).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call the Ships to Port

**Author's Note:**

> This...started off as a good idea. I don't know what happened.

Before moving to Air Temple Island, Bolin had never realized how the city became a living thing at night. Between tall buildings and in narrow alleyways, dusk was always something that happened, a minor inconvenience that electricity soon solved. Lamps were lit and lightbulbs came alive with an electric fizz, and people carried on with their business, same as they would during the daytime. 

On the island, however, dusk is less an inconvenience and more an experience, strange in and of itself. Before moving, Bolin had never noticed how the sky darkened by degrees, the myriad shades of blue he’d never even considered possible as the sun crept lower and shadows overtook sky and water. And now, separated from the constant city thrum of life and energy, Bolin appreciates the enormity of it, the spectacle of it as it appears in the nighttime. 

All the light is overwhelming. It blurs together, individual buildings and landmarks meshing together to create golden spires in the dark, each indistinguishable from the next. The only landmarks of the nighttime city are the arena, ostentatious in its spotlight, and the bridges, metallic threads spanning the quiet waters.  
Air Temple Island shouldn’t even compare - a small spot of dark and quiet nearly lost in the night. Bolin was somehow bothered by that while watching Iroh’s ship pull out of harbor, towers of steam and smoke belching out of the smokestacks, the spotlights and communication towers flashing bright. He couldn’t say why it started bothering him, when Iroh left, but somehow it did. 

Time marches on, unheeded. Days grow longer, nights shorter, the spectacle of the city lighting up occurring later and later. Iroh’s letters arrive in waves, indicative of the time spent between ports, but they’re all conscientiously dated regardless. They’re invariably written on the official United Forces stationary and arrive bearing exotic stamps, the penmanship is always endearingly meticulous - except for the one where he was certain Iroh had been at least a little tipsy, given the tilt halfway through the second paragraph. Iroh is a surprisingly conversational correspondent, for all he appears officious and slightly stuffy (Mako’s words, and not his). His sense of humor is dry and witty and on occasion leaves Bolin giggling helplessly to himself alone in his room as he reads, but it’s nothing compared to the tender, sparing messages he always closes his letters with. They lack the flair and grand sweeping platitudes that anyone else might convey, but Iroh is sincere to a fault. His affection doesn’t need embellishment because it’s backed by honesty. 

Sometimes, if Bolin closes his eyes, he can almost smell the General’s crisp cologne on the paper. But he doesn’t do it that often; it opens up an ache in his chest that he’s barely able to keep at bay. 

Life goes on, between the letters. Summer solstice comes and goes, the city ever-changing yet stolidly the same. Bolin’s grateful for it, he’s pretty sure he’d go crazy without the assured distractions of life on Air Temple Island and being best friends with the Avatar. Bolin reads and rereads the letters by lamplight, after everyone else has gone to bed. The oldest of them starts to wear thin around the edges, and nearly tears where it’s been refolded again and again. 

The longest break between packets of letters - nearly four weeks of Bolin waiting for the ferry to arrive with post every single day, to inevitable disappointment - breaks with the arrival of a parcel from the South Pole.  
Most of the correspondence is for Korra of course, letters from friends and family at the bottom of the world, but at the bottom of the package is a United Forces envelope addressed to Bolin. It bears a sincere apology and a date, and devotes so much time to conjecturing about what they’ll do together when the ships arrive in port that Bolin’s head starts to spin, somewhere between nerves and giddiness. 

That’s the night he’s up until the small hours of the morning, his heart in his throat and his brain afire. The night is unseasonably warm, one last wave of heat before the chill of autumn takes hold, and the waters of the bay are so still that he can see Republic City alight in a near perfect double. He rereads Iroh’s letter, trying to distract himself with the excitement that it promises, but no dice -sleep is not an option with as wound up as he is. Barefoot, he creeps out of the sleeping building and finds himself wandering the nighttime paths around the island, following the breezes and staring out at the horizon, at the dark twin lines of sea and sky, at the wideness of the world. 

Too far away to touch the bright reflection and too dim to cast its own, Bolin finally realizes what bothers him about Air Temple Island being lost in the glare of the golden city. Anyone approaching the Bay would overlook the little island in favor of the Aang Memorial or Republic City itself, how it shines. And that would be fine because there’s no really comparing the two, but somehow in the drift of months Air Temple Island has become his home - he feels as much a part of it as it as become a part of him, and it doesn’t seem fair that someplace so warm and full of love is overshadowed. 

He wonders what it would take to have his light be the first that Iroh sees when he arrives. 

The next afternoon he finds the biggest lantern that money can buy, and builds.  
His small beacon faces the ocean, a solitary light on the island’s cliff. Mako lights it for him when the sun starts to set, choosing very wisely not to ask what this is all about. 

They stand on the cliff for a long time, long after the sun has set, watching the flame in the lantern eat the oil, crackling and sending up ribbons of silky black smoke. It glows hot orange and fringed with tongues of red, brighter than anything else on the island; it burns hotter than any fire Bolin’s ever felt. It feels like promise and devotion. 

Then there’s nothing to do but feed the flame and replenish the oil, tending the fire each night until he sees Iroh’s ship on the horizon.


End file.
